Principals matter
With the Texas Education Agency expected to announce a takeover of Houston ISD, we want to hear from students, parents, teachers and anyone else. Send your letters to viewpoints@chron.com.
Regarding “Listen to Wheatley students at the center of HISD takeover fight,” (March 12): The late, great Dr. Bertie Simmons was asked by HISD to come out of retirement and resume her educational career, addressing gang-dominated Furr High School.
As principal, one of the first things she did was listen to the students, particularly the gang leaders. They told her the education they were getting was full of lies and not relevant to their lives.
While the latter was and still may be too true, she asked for an example. They erroneously debunked the destruction of the World Trade Center.
To prove them wrong, she raised money and took “good” and “bad” students to New York City, to Ground Zero. When they returned to Houston, Simmons and the gang leaders had a peace conference.
Afterwards, annual detentions at Furr dropped from over 1,000 to less than 10, and the penalties were all academic: essays. She instituted a Student Court and meted out penalties after hearing student recommendations.
She listened to students and, as your editorial suggested, it worked. Will other principals follow suit? I hope so.
Ted Weisgal, Houston
Regarding “Is TEA takeover of Houston ISD about kids or politics? There’s one way to know.” (March 1): It is apparent to me that Gov. Greg Abbott wants to privatize the Texas schools. He said as much is his State of the State address.
Charter schools, for the most part, are shams. They began in Minnesota and have caught the attention of legislators and governors throughout the country.
The original idea was they would take “difficult” situations and educate them outside of the general school population. The caveat was they were to meet the standards set by the public schools so there would be no drop in the achievement of the charter school attendees.
The results of those comparisons do not seem to be conclusive or easily available, which indicates the charters are not meeting the standard under which their charter was granted. That is very worrisome and coupled with the fact that most of the schools are located in underserved neighborhoods, compounds that concern.
There are some very good charters, such as KIPP.
With the most likely takeover of the Houston ISD by the Texas Education Agency, it is apparent to me that Abbott will have his highway to achieve the privatization of HISD. The people running HISD after the takeover can report the unsatisfactory performance of HISD and that will make the case of charters still more attractive.
We need to listen to educators like Dr. Ruth Simmons and others like her who have been in the classrooms and see what is wrong with our system. I suspect it has to do with the money allocated per student.
Texas lags behind most of the states. We need to come together and fight desperately to save our education system because a bad public school system will discourage business relocation to Texas.
Mark Niles, Houston